Battle Elephants and Flaming Foxes E-Book

Caroline Freeman-Cuerden

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 429

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

From the hooves of chariot horses pounding the dust of the racetrack to the cries of elephants charging the battlefields, animals were a key part of Roman life. On memorials left to beloved dogs or in images of arena animals hammered onto coins, their stories and roles in Roman history are there for us to find. Why did the emperor Augustus always have a seal skin nearby? What was the most dangerous part of a chariot race? How could a wolf help with toothache? Take a gallop into the Roman world of chariot horses, battle elephants and rampaging rhinos. In the ancient world a bear could be weaponised and venomous snakes could change the course of a battle at sea. If you want to know exactly how to boil a crane (and who doesn't?) or how to use eels to commit murder, the Romans have the answer. They wove animals into poetry, sacrificed them and slaughtered thousands in their arenas, while animal skins reinforced shields and ivory decorated the hilts of their swords. From much-loved dogs to talking ravens, Battle Elephants and Flaming Foxes discovers who the Romans really were through the fascinating relationships they had with the creatures they lived and died alongside.

Leseprobe

For James and for my brother, David.

A special thank you to Xander Freeman-Cuerden for being my reader and critic. Love and thanks to Poppy and Alice, to Dad and Janet for their encouragement, and to Susan Hanson, Kate Hickling and Lara J. West for their support.

First published 2023

The History Press

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Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Caroline Freeman-Cuerden, 2023

The right of Caroline Freeman-Cuerden to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 8039 9291 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

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CONTENTS

Introduction

PART ONE: A Bit of a Bestiary

The Elephant

The Wolf

The Horse

The Dolphin and the Whale

Birds

Insects and Arachnids

The Dog

The Cat: Big and Small

The Snake

PART TWO: Animals in the Roman World

The World of the Chariot Horse

Animals in the World of Fashion and Beauty

Animals in the Amphitheatre

Animals on a Platter: Food

The World of Science and Health

Pets

Animals in Religion and Philosophy

Animals in the Military

The World of the Battle Elephant

Epilogue

Appendix: Roman Authors

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

The story of Rome’s birth does not revolve around a goddess or a god but around an animal. It’s the she-wolf who takes the starring role, and the wolf who became the symbol of Rome’s foundation.

Animals bellowed, trumpeted, growled and roared through every avenue of Roman life: in ships transported across oceans, on battlefields, in temples, in palaces and homes, in books, in amphitheatres, on racing tracks. Their bones were turned into ash for medicine, their sinews wound onto catapults, their skins pulled tight over battering rams and shields. Chariot horses thundered around the packed Circus while spectators in their thousands hollered and cheered. Animals became the symbols of Roman legions, chickens were consulted to predict the future, and oxen were sacrificed to the sound of music and the smell of incense.

The first Roman emperor, Augustus, kept a seal skin near his side to protect against thunderstorms. The emperor Commodus (strangled to death in his bath by a wrestler) chopped the heads off ostriches in a grand display of his hunting skills, while the dog-loving Hadrian wrote a poem to his favourite horse.

If you wanted rid of a tattoo on your body, you needed only apply pigeon poop mixed with vinegar. If you fancied an aphrodisiac, you would just dry out a few horse testicles, grind them up and pop the powder into a drink.

When Roman armies were faced with the might and terror of the war elephant on the battlefield, they had to learn how to defeat this unknown enemy, even if it meant using pigs as an anti-elephant weapon. Spectacular shows in Roman arenas across the empire saw the slaughter of thousands and thousands of animals for entertainment, and animals became the executioners of unfortunate human victims condemned to punishment and death by beast attack in the arena. Over 100 days, 9,000 animals were killed at the games of Titus in AD 80, and some thirty years later, another 11,000 in games to commemorate Trajan’s conquest of Dacia. The Romans watched these slaughters and were even responsible for the extinction of the North African elephant, Loxodonta africana pharaohensis, but – if they were wealthy enough – left gravestones to their dead pet dogs and recorded the achievements of the most celebrated chariot horses on monuments.

Roman philosophers wrote about eating animals, not eating animals, about animals being here solely for the use of humans, about animals having feelings and about our duty to be kind to them. Horses are engraved on nearly every one of the 600 gravestones for the Roman guard, the bones of dogs have been excavated from the ruins of Pompeii gardens, and animals left their paw prints on Roman tiles – archaeological finds to be dug up 2,000 years later.

The Romans wrote poetry about humans transforming into birds, a spider, a weasel, a stag and a cow; they wrote verse for a courageous lion’s performance in the amphitheatre, guides on how a cavalryman should train on his horse, and books on how to fatten up your dormice for a posh dinner or how to choose your dogs and the best names to give them. The great writer Cicero, whose head and hands were nailed to the rostrum at Rome after his execution, wrote about the elephants who caused a rebellion in the crowd at the mighty colosseum in Rome. Felicula, meaning ‘Kitty’, was a pet name for girls; a lazy man was a cuculus, a cuckoo, and the Romans used the surname Mus, as in ‘Mr Mouse’. While we let sleeping dogs lie, if a Roman ‘held a wolf by the ears’, it meant they were in trouble – but not as much trouble as a siege soldier down a tunnel after a swarm of bees had been released as a chemical weapon against him.

Once we start looking at the animals in Roman society, we see the Romans themselves more clearly. How did animals fit into the Roman war machine, their love of entertainment and a show, or the quest for luxury? By looking at the words left to us, the uncovered bones and gravestones, every animal tells a story and shines a light on the history of Rome itself.

PART ONE

A BIT OF A BESTIARY

THE ELEPHANT

Elephantus

Out of all the animals in the Roman world, it is the elephant that ancient authors wrote about the most. They appeared on coins and mosaics, they became the symbol of a courageous legion, their tusks were crafted into sword hilts and statues, and the African war elephants who lined up in battle during Rome’s civil war even played their part in dimming the light of the Roman Republic and aiding the ascendency of Rome’s most famous dictator, Julius Caesar. The battle elephants of the Roman world line up in an entire chapter to themselves later, but we can’t parade through a bestiary of Roman elephants without mentioning at least one example of their part in the ancient theatre of war. And so, let’s begin in the first century BC at Thapsus in North Africa.

JULIUS CAESAR AND KING JUBA’S BEARD

North Africa, 46 BC. The armies of Julius Caesar and Quintus Metellus Scipio prepare to fight one another in what is to be the decisive battle of the Roman Civil War. Caesar’s old friend turned enemy, the Roman general Pompey, has been defeated at Pharsalus less than two years earlier, but now the Battle of Thapsus is on the horizon. Pompey is dead, assassinated in Egypt, but his father-in-law, Scipio, fights on in his name; Scipio and his fourteen legions prepare to do battle with Caesar and his army of eight legions of veterans. Enter the elephants.

It’s a Roman policy to allow African rulers to keep their own elephants, and King Juba I of Numidia has a huge number of the animals. Unfortunately for Julius Caesar, he is not one of Juba’s favourite people, not since an incident in a court case against Juba’s father. The young Julius Caesar got so worked up in arguing his case that he went beyond mere words, reaching over and pulling on Juba’s beard. What with all the beard tugging, when Scipio needs a contingent of war elephants in his army, it’s no wonder that Juba is happy to loan sixty of them to an enemy of Caesar. The Roman legions on both sides of this civil war don’t know it, but the battle elephants at Thapsus are not only going to lead to the deaths of thousands of men, they will lead to the death of the Roman Republic itself.

Elephant Preparation for the Battle of Thapsus

Scipio’s elephants have to be trained for what they might face on the field of war. The last thing the general wants is for the animals to turn on their own men if they come under fire. To combat this, the animals have been lined up, and stationed right in front of them are slingers – men skilled in using hand-held slings to fire deadly stone bullets. A hail of stones is catapulted at the elephants and, as they turn away from the airborne missiles, they are attacked by another line of slingers placed behind them who fire a second round, forcing the elephants to wheel around and face their original enemy again. Scipio does not want his war elephants to run from enemy missiles when it comes to the actual battle, and hopefully this training will stop them turning and trampling their own troops in any assault from Caesar’s slingers.

Scipio has also used the animals in a psychological tactic designed to intimidate and spread panic amongst Caesar’s troops. Dressed in full battle array with men atop the towers on their backs, the elephants have been led to the front line of Scipio’s camp and positioned in full view of Caesar’s army. The plan is that these live weapons of war will terrorise both Caesar’s men and his horses.

Successfully subduing the elephants will be crucial to any victory. Two of Scipio’s spies are sent into Caesar’s camp to find out what is being planned: have any anti-elephant traps or trenches been built in front of the camp? What are Caesar’s strategies in facing the elephants in the upcoming battle?

Caesar knows that dealing with the elephants is vital to his military success, and that his army’s morale depends on diffusing the awe and fear that the animals could inspire in his men. We know Caesar’s tactics from an eyewitness soldier, possibly a centurion in his army, who described Caesar’s anti-elephant strategy in the Roman military commentary The African War:

[H]e had ordered elephants to be transported from Italy, so that the soldiers could get to know and recognise the appearance and abilities of the animal and which part of its body was most easily wounded by a missile and, when an elephant was in battle dress and armoured, which part of its body was still left exposed so that missiles could be fired there. On top of this, so that they wouldn’t be terrified of them, his horses should get used to the smell, trumpeting and appearance of the beasts. Caesar benefited greatly from these techniques: for the soldiers handled the elephants and became acquainted with their slowness, the cavalry threw blunted javelins at them and the passive nature of the beasts led the horses to feeling comfortable around them. (The African War, 72)

Caesar knows that Scipio wants to destroy his men’s morale. But Caesar has his Fifth Legion and he believes these veterans have the spirit to deal with enemy elephants. Singling the legion out for special elephant training, he issues them with specific instructions to get into their formations when the elephants attack. These are soldiers who have proven themselves in battle; they are the ones who have the spirit and courage to face the terror of charging war elephants.

The Battle Begins

Scipio faces Caesar’s troops, deploying his elephants up front and on the left and right wings. Positioned here, they should intimidate the enemy, weaken morale and throw the Caesarean legionaries into chaos when they charge. Along with more reinforcements from Juba, the animals number more than sixty and Caesar’s army can see every intimidating one of them.

With about 480 men to a cohort during this period, Julius Caesar divides his ten cohorts of the Fifth Legion, positioning them opposite each side of the enemy elephant wings. He then walks amongst his veteran legionaries and works up their spirits for the battle to come. Remember how bravely you have fought before? You’ve made a name for yourselves! You have achieved glory before and now you will do it again! To those new recruits about to have their first taste of battle, he boosts their spirits by telling them how they could now emulate the proven bravery of the veterans.

As the elephants charge, the Fifth Legion move into action. From the right wing, Caesar’s veterans bombard the elephants with missiles. As the lead ‘bullets’ and stones hit the animals and the hissing sound of the flying missiles terrify them, the elephants turn and begin to rush into their own troops, trampling men as they stampede. The Moorish cavalry, who have been stationed alongside the elephants, now lose their protective bodyguard of animals and turn, fleeing towards the gates of their camp while the remaining animals battle the ten cohorts on the left and right wings of Caesar’s army. This was the mission of Caesar’s Fifth Legion; the veterans have been told this will be their last battle, and they stand firm against the charging elephants. The fighting is fierce and bloody with elephants using their trunks against men, and the Fifth Legion hurling their javelins and slashing at the animals.

Caesar’s men do not let him down. Here, at Thapsus, these men facing Juba’s war elephants will take their place in Roman military history. One soldier, in particular, who helps a civilian merchant who is being crushed to death by an elephant, has his story recorded:

It doesn’t seem right not to mention the courage of a veteran of the Fifth Legion. For an elephant on the left wing, inflamed by the pain of a wound, had attacked an unarmed sutler,1 pinned him underfoot, and then knelt on him. With its trunk erect and swinging from side to side, trumpeting loudly, it was crushing him with its weight and killing him. The soldier could not bear this; he was an armed professional – he had to battle the beast. When the elephant noticed him coming towards it with his weapon raised, it abandoned the dead body, encircled the soldier with its trunk and lifted him into the air. The soldier, realising that he had to act quickly in this kind of danger, with as much strength as he could slashed over and over into the trunk that encircled him. Driven by pain the elephant threw the soldier down, turned and with loud trumpetings charged at speed back to the rest of its herd. (The African War, 84)

As the elephants are neutralised, turning and crashing into their own men, Caesar’s legionaries push on until, overpowered, the Pompeian army falls back in defeat. Juba’s war elephants have not held their line and their chaotic retreat into their own men is a defining point in the battle. Caesar captures Scipio’s elephants and takes sixty-four of them – armoured and with towers on their backs – onwards to the city of Thapsus. Scipio and King Juba go on to take their own lives. The Roman civil war is at its end, the Roman Republic is in its final days and Caesar is ready to take his place as dictator of Rome.

Julius Caesar’s Herd

Marching back into Rome, Caesar takes part in a splendid triumph, leading the celebrations with an escort of forty elephants – probably Juba’s captured animals – each carrying a torch in its trunk. He displays them at the Games, where two ‘armies’ of 500 men, thirty horses and twenty elephants on each side stage a battle for the entertainment of the crowds, along with a fight between men sitting atop forty elephants.

What happened to the elephants then? It seems they were not killed in the arena. Caesar’s herd of captured elephants was supposedly still breeding in Rome fifty-eight years later when Augustus was emperor.

Julius Caesar used the elephant on a coin he struck in his own military mint. Historians still argue about what the elephant on the front of the denarius2 coin symbolises. Is it Caesar advertising his own power? The elephant’s trunk is raised into the air and the animal is ready to trample what seems to be a snake. Perhaps people looking at the coin would have seen it as the mighty Julius Caesar triumphing over evil. However, some historians think this is an example of Caesar using the elephant to ridicule his civil war nemesis Pompey. You’ll read later how Pompey had a bit of trouble with elephants and this coin could very well be Caesar attacking a political rival by poking fun at Pompey’s failures – think of it as the ancient equivalent of a GIF on Twitter posted to mock a politician.

The elephant denarius coin from 49-48 BC, struck by Julius Caesar not long after the great civil war had started. Circulating a new coin was a great way to advertise your successes. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

THE WISDOM OF ELEPHANTS

The elephant is the closest to man in the capacity for feeling. In fact, it understands the language of its country, obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is delighted by affection and by praise. Indeed, it has those virtues which are rare even in man: honesty, intelligence, a sense of justice, and also a reverence for the stars and a respect for the sun and the moon.

(Pliny, Natural History VIII.1)

First-century Roman Pliny3 not only recorded how clever these animals are and how they have memories, he told us that they show affection, care for their young and grieve for their dead friends. Sadly, it didn’t matter that the Romans noted the elephant as the gentlest and most docile of nature’s creations; none of this ancient knowledge protected the animal from being used by Romans in any way they wanted.

Elephants fitted into the Roman world in all sorts of ways: killed for their ivory and for entertainment in the arenas, they were also used as impressive symbols of the power of Rome in triumphal processions, as well as intimidating weapons on the battlefields – mainly attacking Romans, but used occasionally by the Roman military itself.

HOW TO CAPTURE OR KILL AN ELEPHANT

Mad elephants can be tamed by hunger and blows.

(Pliny, Natural History VIII.9)

If you were in the animal export business, you wouldn’t have found better customers than the Romans: they had the money, they were organised and they liked a show, whether it was a lion in the arena or a lovely show-off table with ivory legs.

The Romans used both Indian and African elephants, although the African ones were not the huge bush elephants we see on wildlife programmes today. They were the smaller forest elephant Loxodonta africana pharaohensis, which was a much easier elephant to handle and train.

Ancient writers tell us that in India tamed elephants were used to help capture wild ones. An elephant rider – a mahout – would ride out on a domesticated elephant and hunt down a lone wild animal. If the elephant wasn’t alone, the mahout would try to separate it from the herd. The method was to flog it, keep on flogging it until the elephant was tired out and then climb on its back.

This sounds pretty dangerous to me. Perhaps the African method was less dramatic: dig your own elephant traps and capture the animals with pit falls. Get to any elephant trapped in a pit fall before the herd finds out that one of their own is in trouble as, ‘when a straying elephant falls into one of these, the rest of the herd immediately gather branches, roll down rocks, build ramps and try with all their strength to get it out’.

Once in a trench or pit, the elephant can be starved into submission. You can test if the elephant is broken by holding out a branch to it and seeing if it will gently take it from your hand. To get the elephant to trust you, give it a bit of barley juice alongside the starvation method. If you’re after ivory and don’t need a live animal, you can bring an elephant down with a few javelins to the feet (Pliny, VIII.8).

HOW AN ELEPHANT CAN HELP WITH YOUR STATUS: IVORY

Nowadays there’s no pleasure for rich men at dinner; neither his turbot nor his venison have any flavour, his unguents and his roses no scent, unless a huge, gaping leopard of solid ivory supports the wide legs of his dining table.

(Juvenal, Satires XI.120–4)

There is no doubt that the Romans were greedy for ivory. They couldn’t get enough of it and their quest for it gradually contributed to the extinction of certain species of elephant. Where did the Romans get their elephants from? Let’s go to Africa first.

Unfortunately for the elephants who lived there, the kingdom of Askum (in ancient Ethiopia) was the main supplier of African ivory to the Romans. Exporting their goods from the bustling commercial Red Sea port at Adulis in present-day Eritrea, this Aksumite kingdom traded across the ancient world, from India to Persia to Egypt, selling every kind of exotic animal (after all, Rome was always looking for something special for its arenas). For the Aksumites, ivory, rhino horn, tortoise and turtle shell were big business. So much so, that by the first century AD there was a real shortage of African ivory and it wasn’t until the third century that the ivory trade with Rome got back to a thriving business again.

The voyage across the Red Sea was not an easy one. Here’s the first-century BC Greek writer Diodorus Siculus describing elephant transport along the coast of these waters.

The ships, which carry the elephants, being of deep draft because of their weight and heavy by reason of their equipment, bring upon their crews great and terrible dangers. For running as they do under full sail and oftentimes being driven during the night before the force of the winds, sometimes they will strike against rocks and be wrecked or sometimes run aground on slightly submerged spits. (Diodorus, Library of History III.40)

Indian ivory came overland and by sea. At one point, over 14,000 tusks per year were shipped into the Roman Empire from India. Ivory imports were good news for the Roman treasury because with all the tax contributions, they provided a great source of revenue.

For years now, furrow-browed historians have been hunched over a document called the ‘Muziris papyrus’. This piece of ancient paperwork reveals fascinating information about particular products on the trade route between India and Roman Egypt, specifically details from the second-century AD cargo list on the trading ship the Hermapollon. Travelling from India, the vessel was packed with goods, which included the following:

•  80 boxes of nard – a plant that produced an expensive perfume

•  167 elephant tusks, weighing more than 3 tonnes

•  Half a tonne of ivory shards and fragments

There would have been a hefty customs tax for this ivory, sailing its way to Roman Egypt and then being sold off all over the empire.

Never mind the Hermapollon: at the Horrea Galbae warehouses of ancient Rome, excavations dug up a store of ivory shards big enough to make up about 2,500 elephant tusks.

Part of the ‘Great Hunt’ mosaic from Piazza Armerina in Sicily, fourth century AD. (Funkyfood London, Paul Williams/Alamy Stock Photo)

Neither my dice nor my counters are made of ivory, even my knife handles are bone. (Juvenal, Satires XI.131–4)

If you were a wealthy Roman, there were lots of ways to show off just how rich you were: have your own aviary, build yourself giant fishponds that no one else has, or – if you’re the emperor Caligula – build your favourite horse an ivory stable. When he wasn’t writing books or tutoring Nero, the philosopher Seneca was involved in the ivory business and had 500 tables made from citrus wood, all with ivory legs. The elephant produced a high-status material and even the tiniest ivory shard could elevate the smallest item into something special.

During the Republic, ivory was found in the decorated chairs of the curules (government officials), but the ostentatious days of Empire that followed had far more elaborate plans for ivory than decorating the chairs of a few magistrates.

Such was the prestige of ivory that it was used for religious statues and decoration in temples. Great tusks were sometimes dedicated to gods and carried in processions. If parents were rich enough, their children’s dolls might be made of ivory. By the first century AD, some cunning craftsmen were whitening elephant bone to pass off as this valuable material. Here are some of the products the Romans decorated with the real thing – from using the smallest shard to building with chunks of ivory – if you were sufficiently wealthy:

•  Tables

•  Dice

•  Flutes and lyres

•  Book covers

•  Hair combs

•  Brooches

•  Writing implements

•  Chests

•  Medicine boxes

•  Plectrums

•  Sword hilts and scabbards

•  Inlay on beds and couches

•  Back scratchers

•  Chariots and carriages

•  Staffs and sceptres

•  Floors

•  False teeth4

It wasn’t common, but Pliny says that the Roman penchant for luxury led to another reason for loving the elephant: chewing on the hard skin of an elephant trunk. Why? For no other reason than it feels ‘like munching actual ivory’.

Roman dice made of ivory. First to third century AD. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

WHEN AN ELEPHANT WAS TOO BIG FOR ROME’S BOOTS

I told you that the Roman general Pompey had a bit of trouble with elephants. Well, here’s an example. More than thirty years before that Battle of Thapsus with Julius Caesar, the young Pompey (apparently he was too young even to grow a beard yet) had achieved great military success in Africa. Returning to Rome from Africa, Pompey entered the city in a traditional Triumph – a great procession to celebrate the power of Rome and the achievements of those who had secured it. (Imagine a modern-day football team after winning the FA cup: the victors in the top of a bus, driving through the streets in celebration but with animals, chariots and a whole lot more pomp.) Animals were a great symbol of lands and people conquered, and Pompey had brought back with him several of Numidian King Hiarbas’s elephants. Imagine the impact of these animals carrying a general of Rome into the city. What an impressive sight it would have been to enter the gates of Rome in a chariot drawn not by horses but by four magnificent elephants!

This show of power was not to be: the team of elephants were too big to fit through the gates of Rome. With a quick backstage change, Pompey had to shrink his ego and his animals and revert to the usual horse-drawn chariot for his triumphal display. (Poor old Pompey’s bad luck with elephants continued, as you’ll read when elephants trumpet their way through the arenas later.)

YOU CAN’T TEACH AN OLD ELEPHANT NEW TRICKS

If elephants weren’t having parts of their bodies turned into tables or dolls, being poked by a javelin to force them to enter a Roman amphitheatre or having their legs hamstrung by a sword in a battlefield, they got to perform tricks like tightrope walking for the Roman crowds – just as they, sadly, still tightrope walk in some regions across the world today.

In the first century AD, the emperor Augustus loaned some of his imperial herd to Germanicus (Roman general, twice a consul of Rome and father of future emperor, Caligula) for just such a performance. The elephants went down a storm and Germanicus’s popularity rose, because there’s no better way to ingratiate yourself with the public than a group of elephants on a tightrope:

At the gladiatorial show of Germanicus Caesar, some of them even performed crude movements, like dancers. It was common for them to throw weapons through the air and to perform gladiatorial contests with each other or play together in a high-spirited war dance. Afterwards, they walked on tightropes, four elephants even carrying one in a litter who was acting like a woman in labour. (Pliny, Natural History VIII.2)

In AD 59, when Nero was hosting a festival in honour of his mother (whom he went on to murder, by the way), the crowd was thrilled by an elephant being led up to the highest point of the theatre and the animal walking back down on ropes.

The history books give us a description of a certain posh elephant banquet, which delighted its Roman audience. The sand of the theatre was scattered with mattresses, pillows, cushions and embroidered throws, and the scene set out for a high-status dinner: expensive goblets, silver and gold bowls full of water, and citrus wood and ivory (the irony) tables laden with meat and bread. In came six male elephants dressed up in men’s clothes and six females decked out in women’s garb. They sorted themselves into pairs and, at the signal, reached forward with their trunks and began to eat. Finally the silver and gold bowls were placed in front of each elephant and the animals drank up the water with their trunks and squirted the attendants standing near them.

Humans seem to love seeing elephants drawing with their trunks and it was the same in Roman times. Just as elephants have been trained to paint pictures today, captive Roman elephants appeared to write letters in the sand with their trunks. Late second-century writer on all things animal, Aelian, had his doubts though.

I have actually seen an elephant writing letters on a tablet in a straight line with its trunk. However, its trainer’s hand was placed on the trunk and guided it to the shape of the letters; mind you, when it was writing its eyes were paying such attention you would have said the eyes were trained and knew the letters. (Aelian, On the Characteristics of Animals II.11)

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR ELEPHANT

After their journeys from Africa and India, elephants were housed as state- or municipally owned herds in vivaria (enclosures) near Rome. It wasn’t just Julius Caesar who had his own state herd: the emperor Augustus and the emperors who came after him all kept herds in the days of Empire. From here, the elephants would lumber to their different destinies, marching in grand processions, facing the violent world of the Roman amphitheatres or performing tricks in the theatre.

Roman writers recorded how once you’d tamed an elephant, it was such an incredibly gentle animal that you could induce it to do whatever you wanted. One poor Roman elephant, described as ‘slow witted’ in the ancient records, just couldn’t perfect the trick it was being taught. After it had been ‘punished with repeated beatings’ it was found in the night practising on its own.

If you’re feeling sad after all the elephant beating, this might put some animal handlers in a (slightly) better light: one elephant trainer in Rome at least included some kinder methods in his training techniques when he took on the instruction of several young elephant calves. Recorded for us by Aelian, here are some of the teaching methods he followed:

•  Be quiet and gentle with the elephants in your approach.

•  But also, get them used to loud sounds – they’re going to have to face large crowds and you don’t want them to go wild at the sound of flutes, the banging of drums, the beating of marching feet or the singing of the masses.

•  Give them tasty treats and good food; when you add treats to the gentle approach you have a better chance of taming them and ‘enticing them to abandoning all trace of ferocity’.

•  Train them to be charmed by the pipe and to get used to discordant notes; they should not burst into rage if required to move in time to music.

•  Make sure they are not afraid of large groups of men; they must get accustomed to crowds above all.

•  Get them used to the odd blow; they shouldn’t get angry if you have to hit them.

The same trainer’s elephants performed an act that was recorded by several Roman authors, including Aelian. Twelve of the animals entered the theatre from right and left, costumed in flowered dresses. They wowed the crowd with a dainty dance, ‘swaying their whole body in a delicate manner’. With one word from the conductor, they got themselves into a single line, moved into a circle then sprinkled the floor with flowers while their feet stamped to the rhythms of the music. (Aelian, II.11)

SOME SMALL FACTS ABOUT BIG ELEPHANTS

The first time any Romans encountered elephants was in 280 BC when King Pyrrhus (of Epirus in ancient Greece) invaded Italy. It was here that Rome had its first taste of war elephants, at the Battle of Heraclea in the district of Lucania. From then on, the Romans called elephants the Luca bos: the Lucanian cow.

How about elephants coming to Rome itself ? A few years later, in 275 BC, four of Pyrrhus’s elephants were captured at the Battle of Beneventum. These four were brought to Rome and paraded in a triumphal procession, where the sight of such exotic animals would have thrilled the crowds and celebrated just how great Rome was.

A couple of decades later in 251 BC, the Romans captured 100 African elephants after a battle with the Carthaginians at Panormus in modern-day Palermo in Sicily. These animals were put on rafts, taken across the sea to Rhegium in southern Italy and transported all the way up to Rome. The elephants were exhibited in all the towns they passed through and must have caused a great stir. When they got to Rome, they were taken to the Circus Maximus where crowds of Romans watched as the animals were poked by blunt javelins and driven across the sand.

The tomb of an imperial freedman has been found, its inscription proudly bearing his job title: procurator ad elephantos – ‘elephant keeper’.

The great Carthaginian general Hannibal once put on a bit of entertainment with some unfortunate Roman prisoners of war he had captured. Forcing them to fight one another to the death, the surviving soldier was then pitted against one of Hannibal’s elephants; if he could kill the animal, he would be a free man. Facing the great beast in the arena, the soldier fought and won, slaying the Carthaginian’s elephant. This wasn’t the result Hannibal had expected. He really needed his enemy to fear the elephant and realised that his battle animals’ reputation was now at stake. As the Roman soldier left with hopes of freedom, Hannibal sent horsemen to cut him down and cut short the story of a single man being able to bring down one of his mighty battle elephants.

The emperor Claudius is said to have shown off the power and glamour of Rome when he brought an elephant over the sea during his invasion of Britain.

And finally, here is Pliny in a simple, unromantic description of elephant behaviour, which makes us wonder at these animals in their ancient world of tightrope walking, battlefields and beast hunts:

It’s told that the elephant’s gentleness towards those less strong as themselves is so great that if it encounters a flock of sheep it will move any that get in its way with its trunk so as not to accidentally trample on them. (Pliny, Natural History VIII.7)

1  A ‘sutler’ is a civilian who travels with an army and sells provisions to the soldiers.

2  The denarius was a standard silver Roman coin.

3  Also referred to as Pliny the Elder. He is more commonly known simply as Pliny, which is the name you’ll see from now on. He was not only an author, historian and scientist but an army and navy commander too. His is the Roman voice you’re going to hear most from in this book. Turn to the appendix for more on this fascinating Roman nobleman.

4  The Romans weren’t alone in this. Throughout history, people have used animal bone, ivory and actual animal teeth filed down into false teeth for a human mouth. US president George Washington famously had ivory in his dentures.

THE WOLF

Canis Lupus

When King Amulius ordered the death of Mars’s twin sons, Romulus and Remus, the babies were abandoned on the banks of the River Tiber. The god of war wasn’t going to put up with this fate for his offspring. The woodpecker, the bear and the wolf were all sacred to Mars, and the wolf was one of the animals the god called on to help rescue his children. A she-wolf took the babies and raised them herself, suckling them like one of her own cubs until she handed their care over to a shepherd and his wife. Romulus went on to become the legendary founder of Rome and the she-wolf became forever entwined with Rome’s identity. She took her place on funeral vases, the scabbards of Roman swords, sarcophagi and, along with the bull, became the symbol of Julius Caesar’s Legio VI Ferrata: the Sixth Ironclad Legion. A coin showing a Roman emperor on one side might show a she-wolf on the other, because this animal was all about the founding of something powerful and enduring: Rome itself. Aligning yourself with an animal as significant as the she-wolf was a great bit of imperial marketing to the masses.

Even today, the she-wolf is still the official symbol of Rome and any tourist can see images of the animal around the city, from the famous Capitoline Wolf statue with its representation of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus to the image of a wolf on the front of a park’s rubbish bin. The she-wolf has featured on Italian stamps, including one issued during the Second World War with the image of the animal nursing Mars’s abandoned babies. If you’re a football fan, you might be familiar with the image of the she-wolf as the symbol of Italian football club A.S. Roma.

From AD 117–192, a bronze Roman coin from Turkey, showing Romulus and Remus and the famous she-wolf; an animal that has kept its place as a symbol of Rome for well over two thousand years. (Gift of William F. Dunham, The Art Institute of Chicago)

WOLF STORIES

Unlike so many other animals, the wolf seems to have dodged the fate of appearing in the Roman amphitheatres. Were they too difficult to catch? Surely not, given that the Romans could capture the ferocious lion or the fleet-footed ostrich. Perhaps the symbolism of the wolf protected it from being used as entertainment for the people.

Not only did wolves escape the arena, but there are stories of them being left unharmed after loping into towns or military camps. Here’s one from the first-century writer of Roman history Livy, describing an incident of a wolf entering the ranks of the Roman army just before a battle with the Samnites and the Gauls.5

As Livy tells it, the Romans and their enemy had drawn up their battle lines across a plain. Suddenly a hind, chased out of the mountains by a wolf, bounded across the fields that lay between the two armies. The animals swerved, the hind fleeing towards the Gauls, the wolf running in the direction of the Romans:

The ranks made way for the wolf; the Gauls speared the hind. Then a Roman soldier stationed by the army standards on the front line said, ‘Over there, where you see the animal sacred to Diana lying dead, flight and slaughter will ensue; here the conquering wolf of Mars, whole and unharmed, reminds us of our founder and that we are of the race of Mars.’ (Livy, History of Rome X.27)

Sadly for the wolf, its great connection to Roman history did not protect it entirely. We know that in the middle of the second century BC, the Roman velites – light infantry – sometimes covered their helmets with wolf skin. As well as giving them a bit of extra protection, it marked them out in battle so that any officers could judge whether a particular soldier was fighting bravely or not. As you will read later, wolf parts, if you could get them, were suggested in medical cures and even in the odd spell. (Victim of a spot of black magic? Hang a wolf muzzle outside your door.) But whatever you do, don’t lock eyes with a wolf who has never seen a human before. It has the power to take away your voice.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR FLOCK

If you were a shepherd, then the symbolism of the wolf was not a priority, but looking after your sheep was essential.

First-century Roman and retired soldier Columella wrote twelve books on agriculture. Here are two of his tips for shepherds:

•  Choose white dogs to protect your flock. This way you won’t mistake your dog for a wolf in the half light of dawn or dusk and are sure to bludgeon the right animal if you have to wade in to protect the flock.

•  Your sheep dog should be good at picking quarrels, strong enough to repel a wolf and long, slim and fast enough to chase it and make it drop your stolen prey.

(Columella, On Rural Affairs VII.12, 3–5)

ANCIENT WEREWOLVES

When the sensible Roman author Pliny heard tales of people changing into wolves, he thought very much like us: pull the other one. But there was so much folklore about werewolves that, as Pliny put it, ‘the belief of it has become firmly fixed in the minds of the common people’. The Romans had a word for someone who could change themselves into a wolf or werewolf: versipellis, which means ‘changing the skin’ or ‘turn skin’. Interestingly, you didn’t have to look like a wolf to be called a versipellis; ancient medical writers used the word for people who were mentally unwell enough to believe they really were a wolf and Romans used it for anyone who had gone through a major change in their personality.6

Here’s a werewolf story from Petronius, first-century writer and darling of emperor Nero’s court. He didn’t stay the darling, sadly, and after someone whispered in Nero’s ear that Petronius was plotting against him, Petronius took his own life before he could be killed. Petronius’s novel, Satyricon, includes a famous scene at a Roman dinner party and this is where we find his character Niceros telling a tale to the dinner guests. Who doesn’t love to be frightened? Niceros does his best to spook the guests with a werewolf story. In this tall tale, Niceros invites a guest in his house to take a moonlit stroll with him. This walking companion is a soldier ‘as brave as Hell’ and, as was the custom in Roman times, the road they walk along is lined with graves:

So we piss off around daybreak: the moon was shining like midday. We’re amongst the gravestones: my man went off to do his business at the tombstones, I sit down, full of song and count the gravestones. Next thing, I looked round at my mate. He’s undressed himself and put all his clothes down at the roadside. My heart was in my mouth, I stood there like a dead man. He pissed a circle round his clothes, and suddenly turned into a wolf. Don’t think I’m joking, I wouldn’t make this up for any fortune. But as I was saying, after he’d changed into a wolf, he began to howl and legged it into the woods. At first, I didn’t know where he was, then I went off to snatch up his clothes – but they’d turned to stone. I could have dropped dead with terror. Still, I drew my sword and slayed shadows as I made my way to my girlfriend’s house. In I went like a ghost, almost out of my mind, sweat flying down my crotch, eyes glazed; you could hardly revive me. My Melissa was surprised I’d gone out walking so late and she said, ‘if you’d come home earlier, at least you could have helped us. A wolf got into the house and let the blood of the whole herd of sheep just like a butcher. He didn’t get away with it mind you, even though he did run off; for our old man pierced his neck with a spear.’ When I heard this I couldn’t ignore what was happening, but at daylight I fled to our Gaius’s house like a pub landlord who’s been robbed and when I came to the place where the clothes had been turned into stone, I found nothing but blood. Honestly, when I got home my soldier was lying on the bed just like an ox, and a doctor was seeing to his neck. I realised that he was a werewolf. I couldn’t sit down for a meal with him after, not for the life of me. Let other people think what they like about this; but may I feel the fury of your guardian angels if I’m telling a lie. (Petronius, Satyricon 62)

WOLF SLANG

Here are a few words the Romans connected with the Latin for wolf, lupus. You may sense a theme to them.

•  Lupa: slang for a sex worker

•  Lupor: someone who hung around with sex workers

•  Lupanar: a brothel

•  Lupula: a ‘little wolf ’ or slang for a witch

On a floral note, the flower lupin gets its name from the Latin for wolf.7 And on a literary note, now you know why J.K. Rowling’s Professor Lupin had the perfect name for a human who could change into a wolf. Lupus was also a Roman surname: Mr Wolf.

The animal loped into a number of animal proverbs too; the Roman saying ‘on this side the wolf, on that side the dog’ is a bit like our ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’. Another, ‘the wolf in the tale’ is equivalent to our ‘talk of the devil’.

Finally, we are back with Romulus and Remus at the beginning of things. From the Life of Romulus, founder of Rome, a few lines from Greek philosopher, biographer and historian Plutarch:

Our birth is said to have been secret, and our nursing and nurture as infants stranger still. We were cast out to birds of prey and wild beasts, only to be nourished by them – by the dugs of a she-wolf and the morsels of a woodpecker, as we lay in a little trough by the side of the great river. (Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Life of Romulus 7)

5  The Samnites were a warlike tribe from southern central Italy and the Gauls were fierce warriors from large areas of central Europe, including what is now most of modern-day France. By the end of the first century BC Gaul’s glory days were over and it was divided up into Roman provinces.

6  Pliny, VIII.34.

7  Was this because certain lupins grow in wild and rough earth – just the kind of land that wolves roam? Some say it is because of the wolf-shaped fang in the centre of the flower, others that lupins can deplete the soil like a predator. In fact, lupins help rough soil by putting nitrogen back into the earth.

THE HORSE

Equus

[T]he man experienced in war chooses his horses in one way, and feeds and trains them in one way; the charioteer and circus performer chooses another way: the criterion is different for the person who breaks horses for the saddle or trains them for the carriage than it is for the man concerned with military matters, since they want to have spirited horses in the army, but on the contrary, they prefer placid ones for the roads.

(Varro, On Agriculture II.7)

The horse galloped through the whole Roman world: across the Empire in Roman military camps and round the Circus tracks; it travelled on ships, transported goods, pulled carriages and lived on farms. Some horses became superstars at the Circus, some live on forever in literary works, some have their images on military gravestones, others had their own funeral processions or carried emperors on their backs and thousands were wounded in wars just like the humans they shared the battlefields with.

How do you know if your horse is a good Roman horse? According to Columella this is what you should look out for:

As soon as a foal is born, it is possible to judge its nature immediately. If it is cheerful, if it is bold, if it is not shaken by the sight or sound of something new, if it runs at the front of the herd, if it sometimes surpasses its peers in playfulness and liveliness and running in a race, if it jumps a ditch and crosses a bridge over a river without hesitation – these are the marks of noble character. (Columella, On Rural Affairs VI.29)

ENEMY HORSES

In battles against enemies such as Syrian King Antiochus or Mithridates, King of Pontus,8 the Romans had to face a Persian invention: the quadrigae falcatae – the scythed chariot. These chariots only worked well if they were rampaging across level ground, and at top speed the horses could be difficult to control. Any obstacle beneath the wheels of the chariot or the hooves of the horses could stop this enemy weapon literally in its tracks, with horses being killed or equine casualties falling into Roman hands. Here’s the fourth-century writer and military expert Vegetius on how the Romans faced these Persian horse-drawn war chariots:

The Roman military disabled them with this strategy: when battle began, they immediately scattered caltrops9 over the whole field, and the horses that pulled the chariots, galloping head-on at them, were destroyed. (Vegetius, On Military Matters III.24)

SEA HORSES

With Rome marching its way across the known world, transporting horses across the ocean would have been a necessary part of Rome’s expansion. Did the horses get seasick? The journeys could certainly take the strength out of the animals. Due to the fact that horses have a tight oesophageal sphincter, food and fluid can make its way into the stomach but it can’t come back up: seasick horses can’t vomit like seasick humans. With journeys taking much longer in ancient times, it is no wonder that horses often arrived at their destination weak and drained.